Maximal Mix-up

 (A Crabby-pants Thursday with a happy ending. . . For some)

After years of owning our cars – for almost twenty years in one case – we now lease. I like the security of knowing I’m driving a relatively new car that’s probably going to give me few surprises.

My Guy’s lease with Honda was up in August, so he thought he’d cash in on his low mileage and turn it in early. We did this with my leased car two years ago and benefitted with a sweet deal on the next car.

He arrived on Monday at the dealership where he’d leased it – well over an hour away, but 3 years ago this was the only Honda dealer that had any cars. And this time he was smug in the knowledge that he was 10,000 miles under the allotted mileage. But it was short-lived.

When they looked his vehicle up on CarMax, it had a Warning! Odometer appears to have been altered! Turns out, according to CarMax’s records, the second oil change occurred at 4,000 miles lower than it had been for the first one.

All My Guy could figure out was that the dealership near our house, where we’d had it serviced, had confused my own Honda CRV with his and submitted incorrect paperwork. The sales manager spread his hands, shrugged, and said he’d have to offer at least $2,000 less to us since, ho,ho, no one trusts used car salesmen in the first place, so what buyer would believe this story?

No sale. My Guy came home, fumed, dug through paperwork, and prepared to pound the counter the next day at the oil change place.

But the next day, after plowing through their records, it was clear that their mileage stats matched ours and they had in fact submitted the correct numbers to CarMax. CarMax - the source that most buyers depend on to acquire information on a vehicle before they buy it – CarMax had entered the information incorrectly.

The saleswoman and sales manager at the closer-to-home dealer were patient and courteous and bent over backwards to help. Guess who got the sale?